9 out of 10 news posts are typically unanswered, and that's probably how it should be unless you want to become Slashdot.

What purpose might a person have for clicking on "Unanswered Threads?" When I click on it, I think, "maybe there are some poor souls the answer to whose questions were not known by others or who have otherwise been passed over, and maybe I will be of use to one or two of those people today." (okay, down deep maybe it's more, "hey, what's my best chance to pontificate and sound like a know it all before the administrators beat me to it with a proper answer" ) i.e. I think of Unanswered Threads as Unsolved Problems. News isn't in that category but in fact swamps those posts that are.

I can't speak for others' usage of the site, but News is something I do faithfully read here. I like the selection of stories and see it as one of the best draws of the site. Assuming others are similar, if there's a wish to have more discussion under each story (I'm guessing there's no great desire for this unless the responses are especially informative or insightful), removing news stories from unanswered shouldn't contradict that goal. People will see the News stories and comment if they have something to say just as well without them appearing there.

The only use I see having them there is if you were targeting someone who comes here expressly to answer questions to tell them, "hey buddy, you know we have news stories on here too."

Thanks J65nko ! I like it too and since I came here I always check the news despite the fact that sometimes it is beyond my understanding .. I also liked the sec-aware websites you source ..
Thanks Thirdm .. brilliant suggestion as when news are singled out of unanswered posts it saves browsing time ..
in short , daemonforums corners are cool .. off-topic included of course .. :=)

What purpose might a person have for clicking on "Unanswered Threads?"

Actually, you're not the first who has mentioned that the "Unanswered Threads" category is either counter-intuitive, or doesn't match their expectations/needs.

Some have even remarked that clicking on "Unanswered Threads", & answering any threads there has bitten them because they were thinking the message was for one *BSD family member when in actuality it was for another.

Personally, I don't bother with "Unanswered Threads" at all as I use whether the icon to the right of each subforum is "lit" or dimmed to determine if there are posts/threads I haven't seen or want to see.

At the bottom of the site's home page following all subforae are two links:

"Mark Forums Read"

"View Forum Leaders"

Clicking "Mark Forums Read" clears out the list of unread messages in the stored cookie, so the next time I load the page, I will only see icons for subforae with newly arrived messages. It's not failsafe (as in when I use a different computer/browser...), but it works well enough for my needs.

FWIW. We all work the GUI differently.

Nevertheless, your point is valid. One of us at some time will look into the vBulletin documentation/code at some time to see what will be needed to change the behavior.